How
It All Began

Menstuff® looks at what sparked The National Men's Resource
publication, Menstuff.

It was sometime, late the summer of 1985. Just another book party
at Shepherd Bliss's home in Berkeley. It was a nice time to
re-connect with friend's, most of whom I'd met at previous California
Men's Gatherings. This was one of the few times we would ever get
together - we were all so busy with "our work". It was also a nice
time to connect with men who were doing men's work. We sat around
one-on-one, casually talking about issues and what we were doing.

At one point during the evening, Steve told me about a workshop he
was doing for men. Later that evening, Daniel told me about his
workshop. They knew each other, and yet they had planned a workshop
for men on the same weekend.

Later that night, I began thinking how isolated we continue to
keep ourselves. Whether it's a situation of not feeling worthy to
network our important work, or just being "too busy", we didn't seem
to be doing a very good job, even within our own community, of
getting the word out. And, if it wasn't working here, how did we
expect to ever make an impact in the world out there?

There seemed to be a very specific need. To reduce men's
isolation, there needed to be some way to make information available
about seminars, workshops and events that support and explore
positive change for men. We also needed some way to connect the many
groups and organizations now emerging that were devoted to helping
men with these discoveries.

I decided, that night, to do something about it. The Internet
wasn't even a gleam in anyone's eye. That wouldn't happen for another
six years.

I spent most of that night going through all the workshop flyers I
had saved. I weeded out anything that didn't directly work "with a
positive change in male roles and relationships". To my surprise,
there were quite a few left.

I took the extra phone line that my daughter had before she left
for college, and, before Saturday had passed, recorded an information
message on an unlimited outgoing message answering machine. The first
24-Hour Men's Resource Hotline was officially in operation.

But what good was a service that no one knew existed? That night
saw the development of the first Men's Resource Hotline Calendar
which listed all of these events. I put together a mailing list of
some 300 men, went to an all-night printer, and before leaving for
work Monday morning, the first quarterly issues was in the mail.

By the second issue, we had listed some 64 men's events happening
in the first quarter of 1986 and had located 23 open men's groups and
23 men's services in the San Francisco Bay Area. The third issue
added 39 men's magazine's and newsletters and we were off and
running. We added editorial and book reviews, too.

April, 1987 saw the start of the 24-Hour Men's Resource Hotline in
Los Angeles and from that sprang Men's News, an excellent
quarterly featuring articles on major people in the men's
movement.

As change continued. The Summer, 1996 was our last issue in the
printed format. 40 pages of events and information and a directory of
over 2,600 services for men nationwide. During the 12 years of our
existance, we never missed a quarterly issue. However, with mailing
and printing costs going up, and the desire to make this information
available to more people, we needed to look for other
alternatives.

The web had started in 1991. We decided to join in on May 22, 1996
when there were fewer than a quarter of a million active web sites in
the world. As of noon on September 6, 2014, there were over a billion
active web sites in the world. Alexa ranked Menstuff.org 822,652.

Now that you have a sense of how we got here, browse through our
web site and get an idea of where we are today - still working to end
men's isolation after all these years. IntroductionFirst Visit Welcome and good
browsing. Gordon Clay

* * *
I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had,
and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. - Colette